News

Hate Crime Level Lowest in a Decade

TALLAHASSEE, FL – Reported hate crimes in Florida fell last year to their lowest level since 1998, Attorney General Bill McCollum announced Monday with the release of the Florida Hate Crimes Report covering the 2007 calendar year. Since hate crime reporting began in 1990, Florida law enforcement agencies have reported an annual average of 272 reported hate crime incidents, well above this year’s hate crimes total of 193.

"Preventing hate crimes should be the goal of every citizen," said Attorney General McCollum. "I am proud of the roles the Attorney General’s Office and the citizens of Florida have played in statewide efforts against hate-motivated crimes, and I know these efforts will continue."

There are two broad categories of hate crime offenses: crimes against persons and crimes against property. Reports for 2007 showed a slightly larger share of hate crimes were directed at persons than in the previous year, with a slight decrease in the share directed at property. Crimes against persons accounted for 66.8 percent of all incidents reported in 2007, up from 66 percent in 2006, while crimes against property accounted for the remaining 33.2 percent, down from 34 percent in 2006.

The 2007 report also categorizes the offenses by the nature of the motivating factor. During 2007, hate crimes motivated by the victim's race represented 53.9 percent of all reported hate crimes, followed by crimes motivated by ethnicity/national origin at 17.1 percent; and sexual orientation and religion each at 14.5 percent. No hate crimes were reported under the categories of disability or advanced age.

Data in the Hate Crimes Report was submitted by local law enforcement agencies to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Audit & Data Collection Unit of the Criminal Justice Information Services Program through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) information system. Currently, 417 agencies participate in the UCR system.

The Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights, which compiles, the report also conducts hate crime training for law enforcement throughout Florida and has developed programs for elementary, middle and high school students to teach them how to recognize hate crimes, how the law protects victims of hate crimes, and how such crimes affect our communities. The Office of Civil Rights can be contacted via the internet at: http://myfloridalegal.com/Contact.nsf/Contact?OpenForm&Section=Civil_Rights.

A copy of the Hate Crimes in Florida 2007 report is available online at: http://myfloridalegal.com/webfiles.nsf/WF/KGRG-7MKSV8/$file/2007HateCrimesReport.pdf.

The Hate Crimes in Florida Report is prepared each year pursuant to the Hate Crimes Reporting Act, section 877.19, Florida Statutes. The report summarizes data collected by local law enforcement agencies and submitted to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Any attempt to rank or categorize an agency, county or region based solely on this report may be misleading by making it appear that certain areas have a high number of hate crimes when in fact their law enforcement agencies may have different polices of identifying and reporting such crimes. The report does not include unreported crimes or those that may have been hate-related but were not classified as such by the local law enforcement agency.